


all i really want is you

by heroic



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-28 06:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20774381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heroic/pseuds/heroic
Summary: She looks exactly like he's dreamed of, terrible and powerful, angry and mean. Like this, she is the shadow he is always hoping to see more of, repulsed at himself for his awful, impossible wants.OR: Cardan's horrendous feelings for Jude come to light.





	all i really want is you

**Author's Note:**

> this has sexual overtones throughout it, hence the warning, so if that makes you uncomfortable you should click out now. but there's no explicit sexual content and every scene in this does happen in TFOTA, so. 
> 
> i really wrote this on a whim in 2 hours when i tried to write two entirely different scenes that didn't even make it into this fic, why am i like this. it's not edited well by any stretch of the imaginable but take it as you will
> 
> spoilers for TWK, title from you by the mystery skulls
> 
> _but you don't know, do you?_  
_would you do it, could you do it_  
_and I can't lie to you_  
_'cause all I really want is you_  


There is something awful and magnetizing about Jude that Cardan hates with every fibre of his being.

She is always so _loud_, taking up so much space, even when she is trying to be small. She commands a room with her voice, her heavy gaze. He loathes the way she always knows the answer to an astrology question and doesn't flinch when he wants her to.

And sometimes Cardan swears when they meet eyes it's like there's two of her, the one that bites back any remark and keeps her head bowed and another that's glaring, menacing, wanting to pierce his jugular with her teeth—

But she always reigns it back in, almost like it was never there to begin with, like it was a trick of the light.

It makes his blood boil.

* * *

  
She is a mortal so she is weak and fragile. She is mortal so she is born to die and deserving of death. Cardan knows this. Jude knows this herself, he suspects, with how often he makes a note to remind her of it. _You are not one of us. You are lesser than us. Do not forget it._ It is the one aspect where he, a boy with no love, has the upper hand, utilizing his viciousness as both his only weapon and means of defense.

For Cardan, if he must hurt, so must others. It's the only fairness he can get in his unfair existence.

He knows this about Jude. Weak, fragile, born to die.

He is still surprised when she shoves him backwards, fisting at the collar of his shirt. One moment he is making Taryn realize her awfulness, and the next bark is biting against the skin of his back.

Jude bares her teeth at him. "I don’t know what you said to her, but don’t you ever go near my sister again," she snaps. "You gave her your word."

This close up, Cardan can smell her sweat. Her hands do not shake. She looks exactly like he's dreamed of, terrible and powerful, angry and mean. Like this, she is the shadow he is always hoping to see more of, repulsed at himself for his awful, impossible wants.

_Like this_, Cardan thinks to himself, unbidden, _yes like this I want it just like this—_

It makes him angrier by far.

* * *

She doesn't back down from his gaze at Locke's party. He stares at her, eyelids heavy under the weight of all his drinking, and Jude does not shrink from his looking, his obvious and depraved want. Instead, she looks defiantly back at him.

She looks at him when she dances with Locke, spinning in circles with a coordinated ease. She looks at him when she sips at a drink, eyebrows raising at the taste. She looks at him when she laughs at something Locke says, throwing her head back to expose her throat—

Cardan wants to taste her. He has hands slinking along his body, and he warms with the disgusting thought of what if it was her hands, her touch.

He tries to imagine it, but it keeps coming out wrong. The hands on him are much too gentle, too lazy. Jude would be deliberate, would press herself against him so he'd know she was really there—

Their eyes stayed locked until she disappears into the maze with Locke, and even then Cardan keeps staring.

* * *

  
She aims a crossbow at him and smirks when he flinches. It is a cold, calculated game they are playing in this office, one they've never played before. Jude, calling all the shots, Cardan caught with his tail out and all his cards showing.

He's underestimated her. It is not the first time, nor the last. His heart is racing in his chest, and she looks so smug about it, like she's been waiting for this all along.

Cardan wishes he hated it more.

* * *

And if he likes it when the metal bites his skin and Jude is there, sweet and horrendous Jude, leaning over top of him to either slit his throat or kiss him or _both_—

Well, that's not the point. Either way she's taking his breath away, but that's not the point.

It's really not.

* * *

Jude doesn't come clamoring up to the throne when he offers it to her. Instead, she watches him, staring up with him with dark eyes. She is looking for vulnerabilities, he thinks, looking for answers.

He refuses to give them to her. "This is what you wanted, isn't it?" He grins a terrible grin, all crooked and wrong. Jude doesn't look away. She never looks away, anymore. It's infuriating.

He wants to her hurt like he's been hurt, and then worse. He wants to twist the blade until it snaps. He wishes she would at least look pleased about it. She's outsmarted him, she's won, and he knows she has the capacity to be cruel, to hurt like she's been hurt back—

But Jude remains stoic and morose, like this is a hardship for her. A burden she doesn't want.

Which is bullshit. Everyone wants power. It's the only thing Cardan has dreamed of besides her hands and the awful look in her eyes. Power, respect, obedience. People have to be lowlier than you to bow down to you, after all.

And yet Jude does not order him to his knees, doesn't command him to beg for small mercies.

He is disgusted to find out he's a little disappointed about it.

* * *

He wants to bottle up the sounds she's making and hold onto them forever. It is a disgusting, embarrassing desire.

Jude is gorgeous and terrible like this, eyes closed, head tilted back. _I hate you, I hate you, I hate you_, she keeps repeating. It's more delicious than his name ever could be. As long as she keeps saying it, there doesn't have to be space for him to say it back. There doesn't have to be anything at all.

Nothing but this, only this.

He wants it for eternity. He wants it for the rest of his existence, and then some. He_ wants_, so badly it hurts, so badly it aches in the best way possible.

_I hate you, I hate you, I hate you—_

* * *

  
Cardan imagines Jude in the depths of the Undersea, glamoured out of her mind and looking blissfully unaware. Cardan imagines her gargling salt water, bloody bubbles spewing out of her mouth and making their slow descend up to the surface.

He hates hurting like this. The way it makes everything heavier, everything else damp.

It is agonizing, the waiting, the politics of her homecoming. And it is terrifying, the desperation that courses through him, the way he wants to claw for her back at any and all costs, damn the consequences.

He wants her home, but Cardan has always been keen to remind her that Faerie is not it.


End file.
